I should get excited when I’m paid to go to car shows but I admit I wasn’t exactly gleeful when I heard I was to cover Goodguys Great Northwest Nationals in Spokane. On one hand it was a blessing; I have lots of pals in Spokane and every year I use the show as a good reason to visit them. And to be fair the event is pretty good: it attracts a number of feature-worthy cars. But would it attract enough cars to warrant full-blown coverage, much less a Painless Performance Products/Street Rodder Top 100 selection?

1/25You’d have to have built a car a long time ago if you wanted to affordably build a car with Kinmont brakes, ’40 Ford V-8/60 front wheels, and real Hartford friction dampers. Gary Harms scared up tons more neat old stuff for his ’28, including a Vertex mag and Evans manifold on his 59A, Klixon aircraft toggle breakers, and a perfect flanged-lip Bell wheel.

Mine weren’t the only reservations. Goodguys established the show 10 years ago and for just about as long Spokane locals have pondered its fate. You see, Spokane is a neat-looking oasis in the middle of pretty much nowhere, a way station rather than a destination. That isn’t a critique, mind you; the city owes its existence to its proximity to really remote industrial areas. Case in point, investment by Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, Great Northern, and Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific railroads once made Spokane one of the country’s most critical junctions. In fact the city’s 600,000 residents make it quite a populated place.

Unfortunately, you’d have to cast a net several hundred miles wide to double that figure, which is really necessary to underwrite a good event. Denver, for example, has effectively the identical population as Spokane, however, the metro area has 1.9 million more people. What’s more, west Colorado and most of Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, and parts of Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico are within half a day’s driving distance of the Denver Metro area.

2/25The Lincoln Zephyr engine never caught on, hence a shortage of early speed parts. So when Bob Stredwick built his ’30 Ford coupe around one he bored two more openings into a stock manifold and made the finned head covers. For contrast, the old engine breathes through dummy Strombergs commanded by an Electromotive injection brain. Oh, and the splash rings on them indicate that the ’41 Lincoln backing plates are indeed genuine.

But unless one lives in the immediate area, attending an event in Spokane is a fair bit of investment. For comparison, the Colorado Nats get about 2,000 cars. Spokane gets a bit more than half of that and somehow I recall that the threat of rain last year or the year prior seemed to discourage even more potential attendees. What’s worse, since so many come from so far away they often leave early on Sunday or even Saturday night, if only to get home early enough to rest up for the upcoming week. People simply flee the grounds on Saturday afternoon.

This sort of played on my nerves. It may seem fun at face value but selecting Top 100 cars is a real chore; to do it properly means striking a balance among early, late, high-tech, traditional, big-budget, and low-cost cars. Would I have the luxury of that variety? Anticipating the worst, I actually began scouting cars at the Pacific Northwest Nationals in Puyallup. And if I were to find 10 cars worthy of Top 100 status at Spokane would their owners stick around for the Sunday awards ceremony? For that matter would they stick around on Saturday night if I wanted to shoot their cars?

I wouldn’t quite call it surprised but I was certainly relieved by this year’s turnout. The event was—at least based on my experience over the past few years—the best I’d seen. And I wasn’t alone, either. Attendees often judge events on where they had to park, a big deal if the promoter doesn’t pay attention to the grounds. Most people I spoke to were enthusiastic about this year’s event and even their parking places. And enthusiasm is sort of a consumer-confidence index; people are happy if they feel they got their money’s worth.

3/25Dustin Reichel is a bit of a vanguard if only that he isn’t willing to pigeonhole himself into one movement. A Magnacharger-blown LS2, drilled-and-slotted rotors, and oversized wheels make his ’65 Skylark decidedly modern. Only those wheels are interpretations of ’60s Rocket wheels and the car wears a primer-inspired matte-black finish.

But that’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement. One thing that the Great Northwest Nats lacks is a center. Pleasanton, for example, has a really pretty main street lined with cafes and shops that fill up as the fairground empties. The fairground crowd hardly disperses at night during the Pacific Northwest Nats in Puyallup. Specifically Saturday night, attendees stick around well beyond the official operating hours. Goodguys capitalizes on it by hiring entertainment.

But which comes first, the crowd to entertain or entertainment to draw the crowd? Certainly the framework already exists; a kickoff party happens at a restaurant … in another state. It’s only about half an hour away but it doesn’t exactly foster a sense of place around the show. Goodguys hosts a TGIF party at the host hotel, which is admittedly pretty good but that’s on Friday night and it’s clear across town. Unfortunately there’s nothing on Saturday. A group that finds a way to capitalize on that captive audience stands to profit greatly. Shops at other venues have figured this sort of thing out. Something more than just a show needs to exist to give people something to look forward to if they’re going to stay out of town all weekend.

15/25Mike Bida’s ’65 Comet exemplifies the quality of cars coming from Canada (Kelowna). Best of all, it’s homebuilt. It rides on a C4 Vette suspension and 20-inch billet interpretations of Ford’s Magnum 500 wheels. It also features a 4.6 Modular engine against an AOD.

So does the Great Northwest Nats have potential? Of course it does. It draws enthusiasts from as far north as Edmonton, Rapid City, and Phoenix if you can believe it. The diversity of the cars those people bring proves that the show does indeed attract quality, too. But without our enthusiasm and most importantly our attendance, potential is all this show will have. It’s really up to us to make it happen but a little more incentive would be nice.

So if you’re on the fence next year, take a chance, if only for my sake. At the very least I need a good excuse to visit my pals in the Spokane area. And a really cool show to attend is a great bonus that any of us can live with.

Painless Performance Products presents Street Rodder TOP 100

Each year the Street Rodder staff picks 100 choice cars from 10 selected events. Of those cars, online readers nominate five finalists. The one that garners the most votes earns the coveted Painless Performance Products/Street Rodder Street Rod of the Year. To learn more, visit www.streetrodder.com.

Tech Tip

Proper Fuse Selection

Installing the correct size fuse in a circuit can be made easy if you know what all the consumption devices are rated at. If there is only one device, like a wiper motor, and it is rated at 9 amps, a 15-amp fuse will offer plenty of protection even in startup mode. A headlight circuit requires the amp ratings of all the lights combined for proper fuse selection. Just verify that the fuse doesn’t exceed the current rating of any given wire in that circuit.